Why Debate Tickets Are Hard To Get

Don Noel

September 27, 1996|By DON NOEL Don Noel is The Courant's political columnist

Why are there only 1,000 tickets to the presidential debate?

Security, we were told. Couldn't have people in the Civic Center stands and skyboxes looking down on President Clinton and Bob Dole. Too dangerous -- so 14,000 seats would have gone begging.

Now a mere 1,800 will go begging at The Bushnell. A thousand spectators is all security permits.

Malarkey. Both Clinton and Dole have appeared this fall in places and before huge crowds that gave their Secret Service bodyguards far more problems than either Hartford site would pose with a full house.

The problem isn't security. It's applause.

The organizers of the debate want no applause, or as little as possible. A select audience mostly screened by the presidential camps will be fiercely partisan but polite, well-bred folks who will mostly heed the moderator's plea not to applaud.

That, the moderator will tell the audience before the telecast begins, is because applause will be taken out of the applauded candidate's time.

That's malarkey, too. The reason is that applause can underscore, exaggerate and even create the most memorable moments of the debate.

A few hundred partisan people in Hartford will influence what 90 million people watching on television think is important, says Professor John Splaine of the University of Maryland, a student of television and campaigns.

Imagine trying to bring the laughter and applause under control with an audience of 16,000 at the Civic Center. Imagine the television cameras panning an arena full of people laughing at Quayle.

Or recall that same year -- after George Bush had made a campaign issue of water pollution in Massachusetts -- Bush's barb to Michael Dukakis: ``That answer was about as clear as Boston Harbor.'' Republicans in the audience roared.

Those were surely both speechwriter's lines, gagwriter's lines. The candidates were just waiting for an opportunity to use those lines, knowing that audience reaction would amplify them.

And which sound bites will show up in television news reporting of the debate, repeated for at least a 24-hour news cycle? The ones that drew the applause, of course.

In his book ``The Road to the White House Since Television,'' Splaine says he'd prefer to have no audience. He's probably right.

A consultant to C-SPAN and a gadfly critic of the Commission on Presidential Debates, Splaine also urges spartan rules about camera work. He's particularly tough on what he calls ``sightbites'' -- isolated shots of the other candidate.

Remember Bush looking at his watch in 1992? Splaine asks. Whether viewers thought he was bored with the debate, or afraid he was losing and wanted to get it over with, viewers thought something -- because a television producer decided to drop in a cutaway shot.

Splaine, if he had his druthers, would allow no reaction shots if he had to have an audience, and no sightbites. He'd prefer a constant split- screen image showing both candidates at all times, so viewers at home would see both candidates entirely in context.